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Day: April 8, 2021

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Growth Leadership Personal Development

How to Set Powerful Goals for Your Franchise that Get Results 

 

January is the month when people everywhere make resolutions. Franchise professionals like you and I do it too because the start of a new year offers a clean slate that we can fill with new plans, achievements, and success. 

But have you ever set New Year’s goals and then realized in June or December that they never really happened? That has been an issue for most of us, so don’t feel guilty about it. More importantly, don’t stop making goals because they haven’t lived up to your hopes in years past. Success doesn’t result from living in the past, it happens when we take new steps to create a productive new future. 

The Whys of Goal Setting 

Why shouldn’t you give up on goals? Let’s review. 

  • Achievement. People who set goals get a lot more done than people who don’t. They become more successful. That’s been proven, and there’s no denying it.  
  • Clarity. Well-defined goals help you focus on what you want to accomplish. 
  • Leverage. The power of your goals is multiplied in franchise systems because you aren’t only setting goals for yourself, but for all your franchisees. Results can improve even more if you set goals for the entire system, franchisees set goals for their own locations, and you monitor all goals as part of an overall plan. In that way, even small amounts of progress can achieve phenomenal results. 
  • Motivation. When you set goals and share them with others, they help you achieve them by taking take part, checking up. keeping you on track, and taking other steps to keep the process moving forward. 

 The Five Keys to Effective Goal Setting 

The most effective goals are SMART goals, which means they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Let’s explore those traits further.  

 Specific – Express your goals in simple clear words, put them in writing, and share them with others.  

Measurable –  Key your goals to specific metrics and benchmarks that you can quantify and track. As the old business saying holds, “What gets measured, gets done.” 

Attainable – There is no point in setting goals that are so ambitious that they cannot be reached. There is much more power in setting smaller goals and increasing them according to a plan.  

Relevant – The most effective goals are those that will impact on processes which, if improved, will produce meaningful improvements in key operational areas. So take time to define them carefully. 

Time-Bound – A calendar can be your greatest ally when it comes to achieving your goal. So create a date-specific action plan, share it with your team, and check it every month to be sure things are on track.  

 About the Author 

 Evan Hackel is a franchise industry leader, a widely published writer, a keynote speaker, a member of the New England Franchise Association Board, and Co-Chair of the International Franchise Association’s Knowledge Share Task Force. He is also the author of the new book, Ingaging Leadership: A New Way to Lead that Builds Excellence and Organizational Success.  

A consultant to some of the largest franchise systems in North America, Evan is also Founder and Principal of Ingage Consulting, a consulting firm focused on improving the performance of franchises and all business organizations. In addition, Evan serves as CEO of Tortal Training, a firm that specializes in developing interactive eLearning solutions for companies in all sectors.  

Evan received an MBA from Boston College and a BA in Economics from Colorado College. He resides in Reading, Massachusetts with his wife, Laura, and three children.  

 

Categories
Best Practices Growth Leadership Personal Development

Write a Business Plan That Will Improve Your Business

 

  • Do you feel that your business is stagnating? Or are you reeling from changes?
  • Are you and your employees failing to come up with fresh, innovative ideas to improve it or respond to marketplace changes?
  • Are the ideas you do have not leading you in a useful direction?

It may be that you’ve lost or need to refresh your vision.

You Had It Once

Entrepreneurs are people with visions. They identify a need in their area of the business or service industries and are inspired to make a unique contribution to answer this need. This vision inspires those who successfully navigate the first rocky period of their businesses and guides them to greater accomplishments. Changes in circumstances, in markets, and in personnel require refining the vision.

A similar vision often motivates those hired by large companies as innovators. They have exciting ideas about how to transform their niche and are eager to put them into practice.

Practical and technical problems may smother an entrepreneurial vision. Many factors including chain-of-command problems, personnel issues, and the resistance of conservative administrators may stifle an innovator’s enthusiasm.

When that happens, the entrepreneur or innovator needs to return to the drawing board, or, in this case, the writing board.

You Can Recreate Your Vision

Without a compelling vision of where you want to go, you can’t write a practical business plan that will guide you to that goal. In order to have a “what,” you need to have a “why.”

Quest stories are very popular in mythology and fiction. The heroes have burning purposes that enable them to overcome major obstacles and a clear vision of their version of the Holy Grail.

To get yourself into quest mode, you have to write down your vision. You can read a written version as often as daily to renew your enthusiasm and determination to realize your quest.

As an editor and ghostwriter, I might write: “I do this work to help my clients realize the power of their stories and their voices. I am committed to helping them bring their stories to life and to print so that others will benefit from reading it.”

That’s a brief vision statement. It has lots of room for enlargement and enhanced detail. For example, I might add that I network with those in my field and in building structures for mutual support. Based on that addition, I can take practical steps to do this networking. I can list specific actions and a time frame.

You can envision, as well. You could write a scene in which you imagine meeting someone (you don’t have to be specific) who helps you with an aspect of your quest.

Vision Boards

The idea of making vision boards used to belong to the spiritual fringe, but it’s gone mainstream, as this article from The Oprah Magazine demonstrates.

If you don’t want to deal with glue and scissors, you can design your vision board virtually. This URL has links to websites and vision-board-building apps.

Basically, identify the key elements of your vision—this is one reason why it’s so important to put that vision in writing—and find images and text, including inspiring quotations, and assemble them in a design that’s compelling for you. Engaging in such a project not only brings your vision to life, you may come across images and ideas that give more breadth to your vision and provide you with new pathways to your goal.

Share

Whether you are an entrepreneur or a key player in a corporation, engage your team in your vision and have them co-create it. If it’s their vision, too, they will work effectively to make it happen.

Business plans are great on paper and even greater when the team works together to achieve them.

Is writing a book part of your vision for your business, for sharing your hard earned Insights? Let’s talk. Contact me through patiyer.com/contact and let’s explore how to turn your vision into a reality.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Industries Personal Development

Don’t Let Publishing Scammers Rob You

Predators take advantage of would-be authors with false promises of publishing and big profits. Because scammers are always getting exposed, they constantly devise new methods to deceive.

You need to know about these new theft attempts.

The 2020 Hit Parade of Scams

Author Anne R. Allen wrote in her blog in February, 2020 about emerging scam trends. I briefly describe those most likely to affect you. There are 6 more In Anne’s blog.

  1. Posing as a Legitimate Agent. A scammer exploited the reputation of the highly respected Donald Maass Literary Agency by masquerading as one of the agency’s best-known agents to sell literary representation and marketing.
  2. Charging for Interviews. In 2018, warnings went out about people who charged for bogus radio interviews. Now so-called magazines are employing the same practices. The interviews cost thousands, and the printed result is more like a flyer. You should never pay for an interview.
  3. Book Fair Placement. A book fair is really a form of an industry conference. Big Five publishers aren’t browsing for the latest and greatest indie book. They’re conferring with each other about the state of the publishing business. Do not waste money on this.
  4. So-called Self-Assisted Publishing Companies. They don’t help. All they do is publish your book. They do not promote or distribute it. They take your money and send you several cartons of high-priced books. You can arrange for the POD publication of your books for a much lower price.

In this context, Anne also notes that you should mistrust any offer from a company that focuses on print books only. That’s where they’re making their money.

Read this article in full at https://annerallen.com/2020/02/new-publishing-scams-2020/

This, by the way, is an excellent author’s blog to follow.

“I just loved your book. What was the title again?”

Writers Beware® is part of the Science Fiction Writers Association (http://www.sfwa.org). Anne Crispin and Victoria Strauss, both respected and successful authors, follow the latest in scams against authors.

In December, 2020, Victoria Strauss published detailed descriptions of two very active scamming organizations. The blog post also lists what you should look for if you want to research an offer that comes into your email. Read the post here. https://accrispin.blogspot.com/2020/12/attack-of-fake-literary-agencies-west.html

Not long ago I got an email with the title of one of my books as the subject line. The writer (who was with a publishing company) claimed to love that book, and asked me to call. I did.

They wanted to publish my latest book. I asked for them to describe what they would do for me. There was nothing they offered that I could not do for myself. They’ve contacted me again since that call, seemingly forgetful that we already spoke.

If you get any unsolicited offer from someone who wants to publish your book, your safest bet is probably to delete the email. If you think it might be legitimate, check it out thoroughly, both through using the methods described by Victoria Strauss or by researching the company on Writers Beware®.

The most important message I can leave you with is that legitimate agents and publishers rarely solicit manuscripts unless they have some familiarity with you. If they heard you speak or read an article you wrote, they will always preface their offer with a specific reference.

However, this is not likely to happen. Agents and publishers are buried in unsolicited manuscripts. They don’t need to solicit them.

The bottom line in the sad story of scammers preying on unsuspecting authors is: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Pat Iyer Is an editor, author of 49 books, ghostwriter, and book coach. Chat with her about your ideas for a book, or need for an editor, by using the link of patiyer.com/contact. She promises to not try to sell you a pallet of books.